Progressive Forces for Change in Latin America

Claudio Katz offers an important contribution to the debate regarding the present conjuncture for policy formulation and economic organization in Latin America. His essay presents a clear challenge to thinkers on both the left and the right; this is not a new position for Claudio, but by publishing it in Latin America Perspectives he brings the discussion squarely into the arena of progressive thinkers in the “global North.” His essay clearly describes the profound chasm that characterizes much of the present discussion in academic and policy making circles: between a stormy adaptation to capitalist oppression and an unexplored and renewed process of constructing socialism.

His diagnosis takes us far beyond the dominant debates that currently concern expert analysts of Latin America. The center of today’s debates and targets for discussion is the primary-products-based productive systems and “commodities consensus” that dominates political discussion in the region and are the focus of the search for alternatives. There is broad agreement that these are not the best ways to promote development, but even the most progressive political regimes appear to be obliged to increase and even intensify primary production and resource extraction to finance their social, political, and environmental proposals. They seem to find themselves ”backed into a corner” in the present geopolitical setting. Katz’s strong verdict is that the imperatives of capitalist accumulation remain strong and are proving to be a bridle that the countries have not been able to free themselves from, in spite of the very significant advances of the social movements that continue to have a strong influence.

Katz insists on focusing on macropolitical and macroeconomic factors that condition the possibilities for exercising autonomy. This is the point of departure and the conclusion of his essay. As a result, it clearly identifies what he considers to be the principal contradiction of the present scene in Latin America: the inability to implement a truly different model for (postcapitalist?) accumulation and the limits the political regimes encounter in mobilizing the considerable political and social energies of their social movements to move beyond the reforms that, although sometimes radical, will not free them from the grip of global capital.

It is interesting that his presentation does not consider any significant alternative strategies that might offer some respite from these global pressures while also addressing some of the major contradictions that will plague the region in the coming years, among them climate change. There is a need for transformations in productive structures that will mobilize small-scale producers to generate demand on the part of the important contingents of people excluded from the present economic processes while attending to the needs of the domestic market and organizing themselves to undertake the pressing tasks of ecosystem conservation and restoration. It seems clear that the market-driven approaches to growth through foreign investment, international trade, and remedial social spending constitute an inadequate paradigm for attending to the contradictions Katz identifies; it is also clear that neither the modified neoliberal policies nor the insights from the commodities consensus offer sufficient traction for countries to escape from the tragic quagmire in which almost all find themselves.

By omission, his essay is also eloquent in its disdain for the millions of Latin Americans actively involved in constructing other worlds, the postcapitalist systems that are implementing alternative ways to ensure democratic forms of social and political governance, production, and environmental management. While “buen vivir” may seem like a rhetorical slogan in the hands of many of its nonindigenous interpreters, there are myriad communities throughout the region that are actively engaged in strengthening their capabilities to govern themselves, ensure their material well-being, and advance in their responsibility to care for their ecosystems. For these communities the questions of a “steady-state economy,” degrowth, and transitional strategies that accompany the critiques of the present international order are not subjects of debate. Instead, they are deliberately engaging in processes to draw from their rich technological and cosmological heritage and their knowledge of the workings of today’s systems to forge new models of society that ideally will enable them to overcome with dignity the multiple crises that other parts of society find themselves unable to confront. ¹

Katz offers an interesting evaluation of the recent evolution of Latin America with a devastating critique of the analysis of Gudynas and Svampa—it is interesting that he takes on these two with a macroanalysis of the situation that is fundamentally negative. It is not clear where he would identify points of effective resistance. The Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, maybe, but he does not lay out the real implications of the tack that Cuba is trying to implement or offer any real consideration of the economic mess that Venezuela will continue to face because of a basically untenable and confused economic management strategy. The situation is equally confused elsewhere, and Katz’s essay does not offer real clarity because it seems to be rooted in historical and conjunctural conditions. I think his early analysis of agriculture is wrong or at least incomplete, and the lack of consideration of environmental pressures misses a point that may prove very important. On the whole, if I were to look at the future from this pulpit, I would end up not knowing where to find the possible alternative strategies.